John Grady MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this debate and for focusing so well on the human costs. Many constituents have come to me about this issue. They are living in poverty and misery, having given decades of service to the British people. This is an absolute scandal. Quite simply, the backlog flows from the repeated, serious failures of Capita, and Capita has very serious questions to answer. I have a great deal of sympathy with those who argue that this should be brought in house, both for the sake of the staff working at Capita who, as my hon. Friend explained so well, are suffering from immense stress, and so that constituents across Britain who have given decades of public service can have confidence that they will be treated properly and be able to access their pensions on time.

• 14 Sept 2026 · Young People not in Education, Employment or Training · Hansard source

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  6. What steps she is taking to help reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

• 14 Sept 2026 · Young People not in Education, Employment or Training · Hansard source

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  Over the summer, I met many brilliant businesses in Glasgow East that are desperate and determined to give young people apprenticeships, opening the door to a lifetime of opportunities. However, many of them told me that they have to give young people basic training in maths to help them thrive in jobs such as plumbing, joinery and welding. They rightly think that schools in Glasgow and across Scotland should be teaching this. Does my right hon. Friend agree that much more needs to be done in Scotland to improve the teaching of maths in schools?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s emphasis on international law, which is important in Gaza and the west bank, but also elsewhere. In Sudan, people who have committed atrocities involving babies and children at El Fasher’s hospital must also be held to account. Will my right hon. Friend reaffirm our Government’s absolute commitment to the independence and proper resourcing of the international court?

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  I start by paying tribute to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who has served our family of nations in many different ways with real distinction. Ensuring that we are here discussing how we make sure that our society treats every baby with compassion and love and provides them with safety is his finest achievement. I welcome the fact that so many Members have come along to signal to our family of nations that this is such an important topic. As a Labour Member of Parliament, I am immensely proud of my favourite policy of the 1997 to 2010 Government: Sure Start. Being an MP and able to change laws is something precious, and being a Government MP—a Labour Government MP—is immensely precious to me I find it helpful, as a recovering lawyer, to road-test drafting against real-life examples of what might happen, and what we are seeking to do. One must ask, will this Bill work in the real world? I say it will. I have assessed the Bill against the serious safeguarding issues raised in the Glasgow Child Protection Committee’s learning review about Family C. The report pointed to catastrophic failures in the care of four babies and children in my home city. The neglect and abuse of the children was catastrophic, and the system that was meant to protect them did not do so. Against that, I turn to the first duty in the Bill, which is a duty on, and a power for, the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the services that are relevant to good outcomes for babies. The Family C case points to an important issue when the Secretary of State comes to exercise her discretion: what services should be covered? That will need very careful thought. Consider homelessness services. The report shows that there were 12 occasions when housing and homelessness services came into contact with the family, and could have had the opportunity to identify and report risk factors. That did not happen. Another example of the sort of services that the Secretary of State will need to grapple with are health and dentistry services. This example occurred in 2010, when child A was three and child B was less than four months old: “In February, Child A was diagnosed with a squint and referred…but was not brought to the appointment. Child B was diagnosed with a small heart defect. By April he had missed three outpatient cardiology appointments.” For today’s purpose, that points to the importance of the careful exercise of the power in the Bill so that all relevant services for babies are captured. I also applaud the Bill for another reason: it signals to those involved in the care of children how important the care of babies is. It is Parliament speaking to the professionals involved. The Bill also provides for a duty on the Secretary of State to consult parents, carers and prospective parents and carers when making the assessment of the level of need of services, and to take those views into account. For all the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), that is a very important requirement; however, I am anxious about one point. I appreciate that it is not possible to consult with babies, but while adults have a voice expressly specified in the statutory framework, babies and children do not have a voice in the Bill. Related to that is a central principle underpinning child protection law: that the law should act, and we should act, in the best interests of the welfare of a baby or child. The Children Act 1989, in relation to England and Wales, explains that when a court is considering these matters, “the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.” The analogous Children (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that “the welfare of that child throughout his childhood shall be…its paramount consideration.” It naturally follows from the use of the word “paramount” that the child’s interests must be prioritised over those of any adults in the child’s life. A potential response to what I say is that all this is obvious, but even though it is obvious to all of us here, it is not always acted on—children are not listened to. A lesson from the learning review is that the staff in Glasgow did not ensure that they were listening to the children, and observing what the children were saying through not only their words. The learning review explains: “Indicators of distress, like headbanging and deliberately seeking eye contact with professionals were not considered”, and the children’s welfare was not considered paramount. When there was a conflict between the welfare of the children and what the adults were saying, the babies’ welfare was not prioritised. On page 28, we read: “Overall, professionals accepted the parents’ view of the children’s behaviours as being ‘challenging’. When staff raised concerns about the children’s care with the parents, they would effectively shift the issue to what it meant for themselves. Child A’s behaviour was generally described by staff from the parents’ perspective i.e. that her behaviour was “challenging”. I gently suggest that serious thought is given to ensuring that the operation of the Bill, and perhaps even the drafting, gives greater weight to the interests of babies and some sort of mechanism to give babies a voice in the assessment and the Bill’s process. I now wish to make some brief remarks on duty four. This is another important provision in the Bill and it requires the Secretary of State to assess an appropriate level of provision. I believe that that is critical in Scotland as well, and I hope the Scottish Government look at the Bill and consider whether something similar should be introduced in Scotland. What this very sensible provision calls for is an assessment not just of the number of social workers or the amount of money spent, but of the quality of the services—whether there are sufficient senior social workers, and so on. In that regard, one of the many questions left unanswered by the learning review is whether the overall level of service provision in Glasgow is adequate. The learning review does not address that, but it is a very important question, because what happened to those babies really points to a lack of appropriate resources. Child A was born in 2007 to an adult mother who had serious substance misuse problems. She was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome and as a result of that was placed on the child protection register. Despite that, there was no adequate scrutiny of the adults involved in the child’s life. No qualified social worker was allocated to child A—a baby at the time—from February 2008 to October 2009, when adult E was pregnant with child B. That was despite very many serious issues being identified. This is the important point about the Bill: it calls for an assessment about whether we are putting adequate resources into the safeguarding of babies. It is an essential question that must be answered in Scotland, too. The Bill is incredibly important. It forces this House—because it will result in reports being laid in this House and in the other place—to grapple with whether we are doing everything possible to give babies and young children the best possible start in life. It is underpinned by a critical point that I think each and every person in this House today shares: that our youngest children must be treated with love, compassion and safety. I have concerns and their voices should not be dismissed. For that reason, I am delighted to support the Bill.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q4. The Family C official report, about the most depraved sexual abuse of children, identifies serious failures by Glasgow city council and other bodies. The report says that one child victim “banged on the windows shouting at the health visitor not to leave”,but this was treated as “streetwise”, instead of a desperate cry for help. Staff described the same child with contempt, saying that the child’s behaviour was “nasty” and interfering. The children desperately needed compassion, love and safety, not contempt. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the council must accept robust, independent scrutiny of what has happened and independent scrutiny of the implementation of improvements?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Recent Disorder · Hansard source

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  The Roma have suffered centuries of prejudice and hate. Under the Nazis, they were subjected to concentration camps and genocide. Roma people have made their home in my constituency and in Northern Ireland, and should be treated with decency, yet they have been subjected to terrible racist violence in Northern Ireland. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking with the Northern Ireland Executive to safeguard the Roma community in Northern Ireland?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Recent Disorder · Hansard source

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  7. What discussions he has had with the Northern Ireland Executive on recent disorder in Northern Ireland.